Big Pig 5: Days 15+ - The Outer Banks

Waking up in Florence and hitting the road to the sounds of Jim Dale reading the sixth Harry Potter book found us in Duck, OBX in 5 hours--"OBX" being the cute way they abbreviate "Outer Banks" (and is as far as I can tell a linguistic and cultural equivalent term to the "OC".)  Geographically-speaking, it's a 200+ mile series of barrier islands extending along the coast of Virginia and North Carolina.  There is one road connecting these islands which is very crowded.  I remember going to Ocean City, NJ years ago and wondering why literally everyone on the East Coast would want to be in the exact same place at the exact same time, and I get it now that they were all just on their way home from the Outer Banks.  (Incidentally, we tried to go the the very famous Duck Donuts, but the wait was was over an hour, so instead we tried to go to a Dunkin Donuts, but the wait was almost just as long.  For Dunkin donuts!)

That's snarky, and I'm only engaging in because of the constant rain and low 70s temps there, which the locals ae calling "October weather", but which turns out to actually be--in a quite real way--the very late June weather we've paid to experience.  I also had beginning Wednesday the single worst sore throat I've ever had.  I even visited Urgent Care twice (no strep throat, thankfully), but man, it's a burner.  So I'm not being super charitable to the ol' Outer Banks right now.  But enough of the negative--we make adventure lemonade out of lemons so here are the highlights of the OBX!

1.) We arrived on a Sunday and I spent two hours completing the group's grocery buy at the Food Lion, while the kids sat with Erica in the hot car and watched a movie on the iPad.  It then took another hour to go the three miles to the house.  No!  Not going to dwell on the low lights.

2.) The house was right up our alley--5 bedrooms with a kids bunk room (which they loved), a spacious pool and hot tub, and an early-to-mid 1990s aesthetic that meant we didn't have to pay for upgraded décor.  Plus, it was also just a short walk to the beach.  It was so nice to be able to spend time in doors with friends, especially the Stals, after so many months of our kids only seeing them masked and outside.

3.) When it wasn't raining, we spent most of the time at the pool.  Apart from a short walk on the beach the first night, we did just get two real days in the sand, but even then rain chased us off the beach after a few hours each time.  The surf was quite beefy, so the kids didn't spend a ton of time in the waves.  James, God bless em', refused to be cowed by his broken foot, so invented a kind of game where he'd dig himself into the sand right where the waves broke, then try to hold on so the ocean wouldn't dislodge him.  We were afraid he'd reinjure the foot, but he didn't, and he even got a number of the other kids to play along with him.  One hates to say it, but the pool is just easier than the beach with the kids because it's right by the house for diaper changing purposes and you don't have to lug all your gear to it.  I got great mileage out of the reggae-intensive playlist I made for Erica when we went to Hawai'i for our tenth anniversary a few years back, and my how the tiki drinks did flow for all the parents.  The kids had a fripping ball.  As the mass produced slogan art on the hallway wall reminded us, "The tans will fade but the memories will remain."

Bit o' pool time

4.) On one of the cool weather days, the group drove down to Jockey Ridge State Park, which is just a really huge sand dune nearby to where the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane.  The big thing to do there is to fly kites, on account of the presence of the same gale force winds the aforementioned brothers exploited with their plane.  Coincidentally enough, directly across the road from the dune is Kitty Hawk Kites.  They do a tidy little trade there, considering most tourists don’t normally pack kites when they go on vacation. 

James got a dragon shaped kite, and I’m told did an awesome job flying the thing (I was in urgent care, so I didn’t get to see it).  He bragged that his kite “never touched the ground” and that it “went all the way out on the spool,” so he got a new vocabulary word out of it, too.

5.) The Bondis departed on Thursday for the mountain side of the state.  We got another beach afternoon in on Friday after waiting out the rain, and after the Stals departed for home early Saturday morning.  We left after a nice pool morning on Saturday, and landed in Frederick, MD for the night at my sister’s house.  The next day was a long haul across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.  By 7:15pm we were home, after 3 weeks and 2 days.  Vacation, all we ever wanted!

Big Pig 5 - Days 12-15(?) Highlights

 I'm just going to do some highlights of the last four days in Cocoa Beach, since the play-by-play call would involve just lots of stories of sessions at the pool and screaming fits during sunscreen application time.

1.) We spent the last two days at the complex’s small pool because someone—not any of our kids—pooped in the big pool.  Don (or possibly Ron), a barrel-chested, year-round resident with bottle blonde hair halfway down his back, believed he knew the culprit and hinted strongly it was an incontinent adult.  So with that pool off-limits, we went to the smaller pool, where James found a little frog. 

This frog, which presumably had been enjoying itself in the pool before we showed up, became a contested item between all the kids (a classic case of Girardian mimetic desire).  The poor animal either suffered some measure of internal organ failure from all of the grabbing and squeezing, or initiated a dorsal vegal strategy and just kind of shut down—alive, but unfeeling and unmoving—because after a while it gave up trying to get away and let the kids do what they wanted with it.  Eventually, Anna convinced the others that wild animals should be free, and they let it go.  James moaned, “I’ll never see Hopster again..."

Hopster making himself a home in James' bellybutton 

2.) James had several sleepovers with Wynn, first at their place, then at ours.  The kids all watched the new Disney movie, Luca.  There were several BBQs around the pool.  And, we managed to get to Fishlips, finally.  TBH, it was lovely, and my food was delicious, though Christopher did say it had definitely positioned itself upmarket after a recent renovation.  We got a seat on the back deck, just along the port.  While we waited for our food to arrive, we watched a small pod of dolphins frolic in in the shallow water. 

So, Grills or Fishlips?  Obviously, Grills.  It’s more laid back and there’s live music most nights.  I think Fishlips also has live music, but I certainly didn’t see it while we were there (we also didn’t see it at Grills, because we were there for lunch, but I assure you, its cover bands are more, uh, authentic than the ones who play at Fishlips).  Plus, the fresh fish is a little cheaper at Grills and there’s more of it on the menu.  So there you have it once and for all: Grills!  Accept no substitutes.

3.) I spent the morning packing up on Saturday and prepping the condo for being closed up for 4 months, while Erica took the boys to the (small) pool and enjoyed their company for once instead of working.  After saying goodbye to the Brown Thomases, we headed for 95 North and our day’s resting place—the La Quinta Inn of Florence, SC. 

Our plan was to stop in St. Augustine, FL—America’s oldest (settled by white people) city, and their medieval fort, but James and Erica had fallen asleep by the time we passed it, and I didn’t want to disrupt the bliss.  (Juliet, on the other hand, refused to sleep and so was a complete crab for the remainder of the day.)  This meant a bit more time in Savannah, which was to be Educational Stop #2. 

Savannah is very cool.  Like a little New Orleans, its boulevards are lined with antebellum mansions and old oaks dripping with Spanish Moss.  We parked right at the famous Chippewa Square, where the Forest Gump park bench scenes were filmed, and grabbed some dinner at an anachronistically futuristic outdoor South African diner, where meals are ordered on screens at terminals throughout the restaurant (there is also a person there who helps you make all of your menu choices, so the machines are redundant as well.  Afterwards, we walked up and down Bull St., and Juliet took a picture in front of the Juliet Gordon Low House (she founded Girl Scouts.) 

Chippewa Square.  Lotsa moss!

Juliet (at the) Gordon Low House

Florence being 3 hours away, we left before we really wanted to, and sped out way through swampy lowlands to what is apparently the fourth largest city in South Carolina?  The La Quinta Inn there was a bit haggard—there was neither a blackout curtain on the window nor a shower curtain in the bathroom.  I slept terribly, as I always do in hotel rooms.  The next day, we scarfed some continental breakfast fare and hit the road To the Outer Banks!

Big Pig 5: Days 10-11 - Chillin Out, Maxin, Relaxin' All Cool

We stayed at Chris's condo last night, and so didn't have to sweat through our sheets.  I was awakened by a tiny person begging to watch Daniel Tiger, so I complied, and having put it on the tv, made my way back to our place to await the air conditioning repair guy.  The actual repair took quite some time, but he managed to get 'er up and running again.  Erica, sadly, had to clock back in, so James and Juliet and I spent the morning with the cousins at the pool.    

After yesterday's diluvial afternoon, we deserved better weather today.  We did have a decent morning--the kids got back out to the pool after a rather long tantrum James threw at Erica because she had the temerity to ask him to leave Chris' to get his suit on back at our place.  But the heavens opened up again, an the afternoon was wiled away watching 72 Most Dangerous Animals in Latin America, or some similarly-named gross out show on Netflix where animals are "ranked" according to which are the most hazardous to humans ("But WILL this HORROR SHOW of a parasite displace our previous number 1, that seductive Latin American lover--the venomous TOADFISH?!  And WHAT WILL THAT MEAN for our former #2, the HARPY EAGLE?!!"  I'm not sure this makes a lot of sense.)

We agreed to meet Christopher and his fam for dinner at their favorite dockside fish place, Fishlips.  We have kind of an unspoken rivalry over which dockside fish restaurant is better.  As I've said before, we prefer the delightfully unpretentious Grills.  They unaccountably like Fishlips.  (They're basically the same.)  Anyway, the rain was still coming down in buckets.  Chris got some bad intel from their hostess about open outdoor tables in their covered section, but it turns out they were packed.  So we went instead to Gators, which is a lesser, but perfectly cromulent, facsimile of the above two places.  It rained and they were very understaffed, but we have a good view of the port and the kids traipsed around the deck while we waited and waited for the food.  By the time we got home, the kids were suuuuupper tired.

The next day we spent another leisurely morning at the complex pool.  I went to the grocery store, I guess.  In the evening, we hosted Chris' fam for another taco dinner.  After, the kids spent the evening hanging over at their place, while we had some proper adult time, just chatting it up.  

Sorry, this entry was pretty boring, but we're having a good time, save the bummy weather.

Monsoon view

Big Pig 5: Days 8-9 - Rhythm Achieved

As the title suggests, we’ve settled into a bit of a vacation rhythm these past few days.  Now that the major foot drama has played itself out, we’ve been able to just kind of enjoy being in a warm beach place as far as possible. 

On Saturday, we got morning and evening sessions in the pool with Erica’s cousin Chris’ family, then had a tasty taco dinner at their condo in the same complex as ours.  In the afternoon, though, we went to Golf n' Gator, a sort of low-grade theme park, complete with two putt-putt courses, a go kart track, and a little live animal collection.  (The Tiger King documentary would refer to such a place as a "roadside zoo," but we didn't know it was going to be like that until we got there). Though James was distraught to be refused access to the go karts on account of his broken foot, he pulled himself together for the golfing and even managed his first hole-in-one.  Juliet golfed for free, but really couldn't have been less interested.

Please ignore the giant conical depression around this hole 

The REAL showstopper, though, was of course the "zoo," because like all real zoos, you can handle the animals for a fee.  Transported by rapturous joy, James held a baby alligator with a band over its mouth for about thirty seconds, while the guy snapped a picture that now resides in a fridge magnet.

Yesterday, we were at the beach by 9:30, and stayed for about an hour and a half until the spell wore off for the kids.  Juliet totally dug splashing around in the small waves.  James spent his time combing the beach for crabs, and toyed around with the idea of building a sand castle for a while, but you could tell his heart wasn’t really in it.  There was another kid around James’ age who was just going hog wild out there in the waves, plus some slightly older kids taking surfing lessons.  It was a bit much to expect that he wouldn’t be hurt by this.

This is no fun.

We ended up meeting the six Thomases (Chris’ family) at one of our favorite places, Grills, an outdoor fish restaurant right along Port Canaveral.  It was the first restaurant any of the kids had visited in 15 months.  It was bloody hot, though, and my seat was in the sun.  We got to see a pair of dolphins splashing around in the port canal just off the restaurant deck, and some huge pelicans.  That means we’ve so far seen on this trip: geckos, northern curly-tailed lizards, manatees, frogs, myriad water birds (including ibises), peacocks, dolphins, alligators, a black snake, and at the roadside zoo, a giant tortoise, monitor lizard, and all kinds of snakes.  Boss!

With fresh fish right off the boat on the menu, James ordered a corndog

We got back to the condos in the later afternoon meaning to swim, but a massive thunderstorm hit the Cape, which lasted for most of the day.  It let up enough for us to swim in the pool before supper, but recommenced afterwards.  At some point in the afternoon, James was deservedly bitten by a gecko.  

The air conditioning has gone out in Tom and Cheryl’s place, so we spent the night at Chris’ (all 10 of us).  We stayed up way too late watching the first Harry Potter movie.  I’m writing this Monday morning on the porch with coffee, watching the A/C repair tech work his magic.

Big Pig 5 - Day 7: Goodish News

Well, the news of the day is that James has two or three small breaks in his toe bones, but doesn't have to get a cast.  Instead he has to wear his boot pretty much non-stop for the next three weeks.  He lobbied the doctor hard to be able to take it off to swim and also to be able ride these crappy go carts in town.  The doctor grudgingly allowed the swimming as long as he doesn't run and jump and use the foot in any way, and seemed skeptical that the go cart place would even let him ride with the boot on (James, to the doctor, after hearing this: "so, what you're saying is I can if they'll let me?").  All in all, it could be much worse.  Now it's down to us to keep the little Tom Sawyer from  making his problem worse.

Beyond all this, the theme of the day was wildlife.  It began when I walked up on a several-foot-long black snake meandering around the base of the condo stairs on my way back from the grocery store this morning.  No thank you. 

To kill time before his doctor's appointment, I took James and Juliet on a trip to Merritt Island's Black Point Wildlife Drive, on the north edge of NASA's Kennedy Space Center.  It's basically a long, meandering loop through swamp land, where the aim is to drive super slow and try to see swamp creatures doin' their thang.  The first half was a complete bust, but before we'd left James had spotted an alligator, I saw a rat of some sort, and we all saw quite a few gawky looking heron and crane species eating fish in the shallows. 

The alligator slinking away through the swamp grass 

We then took a ten minute detour over to the Haulover Canal, which is an important link in the intercoastal waterway system.  There's a manatee spotting platform there, and I didn't have high hopes, because these things never pan out as animals don't really cooperate with human viewing schedules.  Anyway, there they were!  Two big giant turds floating around in the 85 degree water.  I've never seen a manatee, so I guess this was my highlight of the day (though James understandably preferred the alligator, and Juliet would only go on about her cookie.)

 

You can only see one here, but I assure you there were two 

After the doctor, we chilled with a movie before heading out to one of my favorite local digs, the Sandbar.  It's not like a true gem or anything, so much as it is just a very ramshackle Florida beach bar that attracts a motley host of locals: retirees with ponytails, sinewy deck hand types from the infamous "Florida Man" news trope, co-eds, loud families with sunburned kids, hard-looking women smoking Virginia Slims, etc.  Their claim to fame is their fish taco, but it's really just middle-of-the-road TexMex fare (was that a hint of marinara I detected in the salsa)?  And then they have lots of giant vessels from which to consume their legitimately strong drinks, most of which you can take home with a moderate upcharge.  Anyway, it's great there.  We picked up a 9-pack of the fish tacos and at them at a nearby park bench.  It's not the best way to do the Sandbar, but the "best way" to do anything hasn't existed for 15 months, so we did what we could.  After was soft serve at the thoroughly mediocre Twistee Treat (giant portions, though), and a lovely hour or so swim in the complex pool.

The only last bit to report is that right at bedtime I spotted a super cute frog.  James came out and chased around a bit before it launched itself impressively about 10 feet into the air and stuck to a palm tree.  Here's the photographic evidence:

Frog

Big Pig 5 - Days 4-6: Bad Break(s)

Erica took off work the first day down here, and we spent a leisurely morning at the pool and an afternoon at the beach. As usual, we had the pool to ourselves. Only about 25% of The Oaks' inhabitants live here year round--the true and hardy tobacco-skinned sun worshippers--and the rest are snow birds. James' first time in a pool and ocean happened here when he was about 3 months old, so it was fun to reintroduce him to these spots, and watch Juliet jump into a pool and see the ocean for the first time in her memory (it's unlikely she remembers anything from Hawai'i in 2019). 

 It was a good day. We didn't spend a ton of time at the beach--we got there sorta late in the afternoon and just wanted to intro the kids to it, before going back for a day-long stay on Saturday. They loved it. James got exhausted in the waves, as was the design, and Juliet got beat up a bit in the shallow wash, and mainly got covered in sand. We came back to the condo and grilled and put the kids to bed early. Vacation, all I ever wanted. 

Pool to ourselves (Juliet in foreground) 

 Things went sideways on Tuesday, though. The day started off normally enough. A nice morning at the pool. James caught a gecko in his hands and put it in his little bug cage. Just after Juliet awoke from her nap, James went downstairs to the sidewalk to hunt for more geckos (he's obsessed). He leaped off a low wall to catch one and...broke his foot. At least we think it's broken. I took him to the emergency care office in town, and the X-rays were inconclusive (we're awaiting a call today from a pediatric radiologist with a final verdict). We were really worried he'd have to get a cast put on which would essentially end our vacation just as it begun, it being a heavily swimming-centered vacation. But instead he got a clunky plastic boot and the go-ahead to use the pool as long as he doesn't run or jump. And he can't play in the waves, either, poor kid.

The intrepid hunter, before the accident...

...and after

So...if it's broken, it's two weeks, then back to the doctor (which is inconvenient, seeing as we're supposed to be in the Outer Banks in two weeks.)  And if it's not (please, God), he just has to wear it until it stops hurting.  

EDIT: Just got a call--it's a break.  Ugh, poor kid.  Now I've got to take him to a doctor down here to see if he needs to get a cast.--and a cast, it needn't be said, is pretty much a vacation ruiner.  

Setting that aside for a moment, the rest of the day was ok considering, with the kids watching tv and James sporting a bag of frozen veggies on his foot.  We ordered pizza from a local woodfired place which was perfectly cromulent.

Today was...a bit better.  The morning was spent in the pool, where we had a nice long chat with one of the year-round residents about the merits of Cape Canaveral living.  Juliet pretty much paddled around endlessly "all by herself," occasionally climbing back out just to throw herself back in again.  James did his best to leave his left leg trailing behind him, even as we all played tag in the water.  On the way back to the condo, however, James leaned on a tree in *another* effort to catch a gecko and, trying to right himself against it, left a few deep splinters in his fingertips.  

Total insanity ensued.  After a literal hour of screaming and pleading, I managed to extract a tiny sliver of bark from his finger, leaving the other piece in there for later ("Daddy, PLEASE leave that one for now and let me go.")  Whereas the afternoon was spent in the pool again, this time with both James and Juliet ruthlessly chatting up some helpless retiree who just wanted to enjoy her book in peace, the afterpool session featured another hour and a half of freaking out about getting the remaining itsy bitsy splinter out.  On a facetime call, Grandpa suggested sucking on the finer to draw the splinter closer to the surface, and low and behold, the wisdom of the ages proved true, and it came right out (without the aid of any of the needles we'd sterilized for the purpose).

Tomorrow, James is off to the orthopedist to see if he really does need a cast instead of the boot.  Please no.

BIG PIG 5: Days 1-3

Greetings!  I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya'.  After spending more than a year hunkered down during the pandemic, we're very happy to report that it's finally vacation time again!  We're on a new Big Pig trip, the first with Juliet, which we're calling "BIG PIG 5: The Light at the End of the Tunnel."  I'm right now sitting on the porch at Tom and Cher's new condo in Cape Canaveral with a tasty Keybilly Beer in hand--lemme catch you up to speed on what's happened so far.

We left Chicago Friday afternoon and, after battling traffic all the way down through the city, ended up in Tippecanoe River State Park in northern Indiana.  We were joined by the Bondis, Desmonds, Hunt/Gardners, and Anne.  This state park is kind of just there.  The river isn't particularly large.  There aren't any falls, or hills or limestone cliffs or gullies to hike through, like their are in central and southern Indiana.  It's mostly just a patch of flat woodlands with and an extremely crowded camp site.  That's ok!  Camping is fun on its own, and we even saw a snake swimming in the river with a fish in its mouth, so that was worth the price of admission on its own ($9, incidentally).   

James has camped out several times before, but Juliet was new to the game.  She slept on a crib mattress in the tent and, despite having a hard time settling down at night (it may have been the pop and smores), did pretty well for a first-timer!  In the morning we were joined by the Stals, but not before going on a 2.4 mile walk, which Juju managed along with the other big kids. 

The smores

Family tent pic

At about 1:30 Saturday, we packed up and hit the road, leaving the rest of the crew to stay another night.  Our destination: a random Days Inn in Murfreesboro, TN.  At six hours, this trip rivaled in length our previous family road trip record to/from northern Michigan.  It was fine, I can happily report.  We sort of bribed James to be good by playing the audiobook of the sixth Harry Potter book, which he'd been dying to read for months.  It worked like a charm (pun!).  In fact, it kept him mostly happy the next day, too, which hit the twelve hour mark (!)--from Murfreesboro all the way to Cape Canaveral.  Juliet was *mostly* good, but in the waning hours kind of melted down when she learned that we'd arrived in Florida (which, to be fair, was where she was told was our destination), but weren't stopping.  What didn't help was the 30+ minute stop over at a Publix in Palm Coast, home of the slowest deli line in history.

So, we made it by 9pm EST.  The kids were bushed and we should have hit the hay pronto, but after putting the kids to bed, Erica and I started the Dr. Thorne miniseries.  

What is the trip really all about?  Getting out.  Getting away from the four walls that have held us since March of last year.  The world is waking up, and we just want to lay in the sun at a beach.  Vacation, all we ever wanted.